Stress is really physical construct, referring to

the amount of force acting on physical object.

The term STRESS has been used in the field of
biology, medicine and psychology to apply to the
human organism. STRESS has been used to refer
physical strain and to psychological strain
 To add to the general confusion that exist about the concept of
stress, researcher have conceptualized it in at least 3 ways. First is
some have looked at stress as a stimulus that produces the feeling
of tension and still other researchers look at stress a process that
involves an interaction between the person and his or her
environment and the 3rd view of stress, what a person think about
the demands about the situation and about his or her own abilities
to meet those demand is critically important.
• Stress depends upon the thoughtful evaluation
of two issues: whether or not an event
threatens. (short and long term) well-being or
whether or not the resources are available for
meeting and dealing with the threat (Cohen &
Lazarus, 1983; Lazarus & Launier, 1978)
• Threat is the subjective appraisal of the potential
negative effects of a stressor. The perception of an
event as stressful is dependent upon the appraisal of
that event as threatening, either as a result of
perceptions, expectations or memory.
• Threat mobilizes the individual into action. Events are
most stressful that are believed or remembered to be
negative and uncontrollable, ambiguous and
unpredictable, yet that demand adaptation (Lazarus
and Folkman, 1984)
• Primary appraisal: involves the person's determination
of whether the event has any potential negative
implications for him or her. The person asks: Is the
event harmful or dangerous to me or threatening to
my future? Is it likely to thwart my values and goals?

• Secondary appraisal: involves the individual's

determination of whether his or her own abilities are
sufficient to overcome the threat of potential harm.
• Some researchers have considered stress to be
STATIC, resulting from an isolated event.

• Other have looked at stress as a process that change

and develops over time.
Important distinction made by stress researcher is that
of..
1. OBJECTIVITY
2. SUBJECTIVITY

(Folkman & Lazarus, 1980; Kobasa, 1979)

Researchers have focused on stress as a dynamic
process. Stress is conceived as on going and pervasive,
something that everyone experiences to some degree at
any given time. But the person-environment interaction
changes character over time, and the individuals deals
with the stress in various way.
 The four common types of stress

1. Time Stress
2. Anticipatory Stress
3. Situational Stress
4. Encounter Stress
 chronic, the body tries to keep up by releasing
the same hormones that it provides during short-
term stress; however, our bodies and minds
can't remain in this state of high alert for very
long. Over the course of weeks and sometimes
months, the very same hormones that initially
gave you extra strength and mental clarity are
now starting to work against you.
• High-pressure jobs
• Financial difficulties
• Challenging relationships
• Inability to concentrate
• Poor judgment
• Moodiness Irritability or short temper
• Feeling overwhelmed
• Constant worrying
• Chest pain, rapid heartbeat
• Frequent sickness
• Inability to relax
• Loss of sexual desire
• Depression or general unhappiness
• First, the experience of stress can prompt an individual to
engage in behavior that is compromising his or her health.

• Chronic daily stress or stressful life events can divert and

individual’s attention from caring for himself or herself
and leave little or no time for exercise , proper diet, restful
sleep, Even worse, the individual might attempt to cope
with stress by engaging in short-term pleasant but
nevertheless unhealthy behavior such as drinking alcohol
excessively or eating foods that are high in sugar and fat.
• An individual under stress might also be absent minded.
• Forgets to wear safety belt or drive distractedly
• To be injured on the job , on sports activity , or even at home

• Second, some people react to stressful conditions in their lives

by adopting the “Sick Role” and seeking health-care services.
The adoptation of illness as the explanation for personal distress
allows an individual an excuse for not functioning properly,
effectively and responsibly.
• A third explanation, involves a direct and detrimental effect of
stress on bodily processes. As we will see, stress can produce
physiological changes that are conducive to the development of
disease.
• Furthermore, physical vulnerability in the form of pre-existing
condition can exacerbated by stress, and certain disease
condition can become considerably worse in the presence of
stress.
 Unhealthy
Disease
behaviors

Stressful events, Illness and

hassles, or chronic the sick
stressors role

Triggers,
Physiological emotional
stress reaction reactions, social
definitions
• As early as the 1850s the term stress was applied to
humans to mean an outside force acting on the body
or non mental powers. In the early 1900s Walter
Cannon described stress not as stimulus but, rather, as
the response to a stimulus, particularly to an
emergency requiring a person to cope with danger. He
identified the now famous fight-or-flight response
• The Fight-or-Flight response is one in which the human
organism is readied for fighting or taking flight when in danger.
This response is physiologically quite dramatic. The blood
pressure rises, heart rate, and respiration rate increase, and the
blood sugar level rises. There is palmar sweating and the
muscle tense.
• Cannon suggested that the frequent experience of the stress
response can break down an individual’s physiological
homeostasis and increase his or her physical vulnerability.
Although fight-or-flight can be quite adaptive (for example, it
could help a person to run from danger and save his or her life),
• Continual sympathetic nervous system arousal can be
dangerous to the organism because it involves a major
disruption in physiological functioning.
1. Alarm reaction stage

The alarm reaction stage refers to the initial symptoms the body
experiences when under stress. You may be familiar with the
“fight-or-flight” response, which is a physiological response to
stress. This natural reaction prepares you to either flee or protect
yourself in dangerous situations. Your heart rate increases, your
adrenal gland releases cortisol (a stress hormone), and you
receive a boost of adrenaline, which increases energy. This fight-
or-flight response occurs in the alarm reaction stage.
2. Resistance stage

After the initial shock of a stressful event and having a fight-or-

flight response, the body begins to repair itself. It releases a lower
amount of cortisol, and your heart rate and blood pressure begin
to normalize. Although your body enters this recovery phase, it
remains on high alert for a while. If you overcome stress and the
situation is no longer an issue, your body continues to repair itself
until your hormone levels, heart rate, and blood pressure reach a
pre-stress state.
• Some stressful situations continue for extended periods of time.
If you don’t resolve the stress and your body remains on high
alert, it eventually adapts and learns how to live with a higher
stress level. In this stage, the body goes through changes that
you’re unaware of in an attempt to cope with stress.

• Your body continues to secrete the stress hormone and your

blood pressure remains elevated. You may think you’re
managing stress well, but your body’s physical response tells a
different story. If the resistance stage continues for too long of
a period without pauses to offset the effects of stress, this can
lead to the exhaustion stage
• Signs of the resistance stage include:
• irritability
• frustration
• poor concentration
3. Exhaustion stage

This stage is the result of prolonged or chronic stress. Struggling

with stress for long periods can drain your physical, emotional,
and mental resources to the point where your body no longer has
strength to fight stress. You may give up or feel your situation is
hopeless. Signs of exhaustion include:
fatigue
burnout
depression
anxiety
decreased stress tolerance
• Frustration is an emotion that occurs in situations
where a person is blocked from reaching a desired
outcome. In general, whenever we reach one of our
goals, we feel pleased and whenever we are prevented
from reaching our goals, we may succumb to
frustration and feel irritable, annoyed and angry.
Typically, the more important the goal, the greater the
frustration and resultant anger or loss of confidence.
• Frustration is experienced whenever the results
(goals) you are expecting do not seem to fit the effort
and action you are applying. Frustration will occur
whenever your actions are producing less and fewer
results than you think they should.
•
• The frustration we experience can be seen as the result
of two types of goal blockage, i.e. internal and
external sources of frustration.
• Internal sources of frustration usually involve the
disappointment that get when we cannot have what we want as
a result of personal real or imagined deficiencies such as a lack
of confidence or fear of social situations. Another type of
internal frustration results when a person has competing goals
that interfere with one another.
• The second type of frustration results from external causes that
involve conditions outside the person such as physical
roadblocks we encounter in life including other people and
things that get in the way of our goals. One of the biggest
sources of frustration in today's world is the frustration caused
by the perception of wasting time. When you're standing in line
at a bank, or in traffic, or on the phone, watching your day go
by when you have got so much to do, that's one big frustration.
• External frustration may be unavoidable. We can try to do
something about it, like finding a different route if we are stuck
in traffic, or choosing a different restaurant if our first choice is
closed, but sometimes there is just nothing we can do about
it. It is just the way life is.
• ANGER: There is a saying "Frustration begets anger and
anger begets aggression." Direct anger and aggression is
expressed toward the object perceived as the cause of the
frustration. Anger can be can be a healthy response if it
motives to positive action and learned responses that lead to
healthy actions instead of destructive ones

• GIVING UP: Giving up on a goal can be productive if the

goal is truly out of reach. However, more often giving up
(quitting or being apathetic) is another form of giving in to
frustration. We have to be persistent in order to accomplish and
remember that quitters never win and winners never quit.
losing your temper means you’re a quitter
• LOSS OF CONFIDENCE: Loss of confidence is a terrible frequent
side effect of giving up and not fulfilling your goal. You need to be
able to earn that when the going gets tough you say it to your self “it
is worth it” builds self confidence

• STRESS: Stress is the "wear and tear" our body and mind
experiences as we adjust to the frustrations our continually changing
environment.

• DEPRESSION: Depression can affect almost every aspect of your

life. It affects people of all ages, income, race, and cultures.
•
• OTHER REACTIONS: Abuse of drugs or alcohol is self-destructive
and usually futile attempt at dealing with frustration, as are many
eating and weight problems and addictive behaviors. Whenever the
immediate effects of the addictive behavior wear off, users find
themselves back in the same, or even worse, frustrating situation.
 Characteristics of the body, personality and intelligence may
cause frustration. It is called “Personal Frustration”.

Frustration creates emotional state which is always unpleasant. It

creates tension or stress which varies from simple annoyance to
heated anger so the individual tries to reduce the tension in a
variety of ways:
• Direct Approach – Direct methods of overcoming the obstacles
are increased in effort and change the mode of attack. If the
methods fail, the second alternative is in changing the goal to
one that I more attainable.

• Feelings of Inferiority – When increased efforts are failed and

substitutes are unavailable, individual often develop the
feelings of helplessness and inadequacy. This emotionally
distressing the state of the mind and is referred to as
“Inferiority Complex”.
• Aggressiveness – Aggressive reaction is very common when
some external obstacle is the caused of frustration. The target
of attack is usually some other person or object and the
intensity of attack is proportionate to the amount of frustration.
Some have frustration tolerance to the extent that
they bear the consequences with no injury to
themselves or to the society, while others became
violent and aggressive.
• Increasing Efforts and Trials – During frustration, some individual
become introspective for overcoming obstacles and bring
improvement in their behavior and processes.

• Compromise – Repeated failure in one direction may lead the

individual to lower or change the aim.

• Submissiveness – The individual surrender himself and accepts

his/her defeat as inevitable.
In addition to simple reaction, the
individual becomes emotionally
tense and the frustration causes
aggression.
• Internal Aggression – Instead of relieving emotional
tension by attacking others, the aggression may be
directed towards self by blaming self.

• External Aggression - The aggression may be

towards either the person or the person caused the
frustration or towards other softer targets as
substitutes as respond with tremendous frustration
resulting in aggression harmful behavior. Riots and
violence may follow.
• Getting a traffic ticket, misplacing one’s keys, and
breaking a glass full of milk on the kitchen floor are
relatively minor events in the scheme of all the potential
problems of human life.
• However, that the cumulative effects of such relatively
minor events can, in some cases, be hazardous to an
individual’s health.
• Daily hassles are events to which we have no automatic,
adaptive responses. These events sometimes take us by
surprise and always require some degree of adjustment.
• Research points out that is not only major life events that can
pose threats to our health. Sometimes the daily hassles of living,
if excessive or if not dealt with in an adaptive manner can, over
the long term, have a cumulative negative effect on health.
(Lazarus & Cohen, 1977; Kanner, Coyne, Schaefer, & Lazarus
1981)
• An instrument called the Hassle Scale lists 117 of these
day-to-day events, many of which are simply unpleasant (such
as misplacing or losing things, and having to be near
inconsiderate smokers) but some of which are major difficulties
(such as having concerns about owing money or about hot
having enough money for clothing).
• When completing the scale, the subjects indicates which hassles
have occurred in the past month and rates each hassle as
having been somewhat, moderately, or extremely severe.
• In one study 100 middle-aged adults completed the hassles
scale for nine consecutive months and reported their
psychological symptoms, including depression and anxiety
(Kanner et al., 1981).
• On the basis of the our analysis of the role of cognitive
interpretation, we might suggest here that the effects on an
individual of day-to-day hassles depend to some extent upon
how those hassles are interpreted by the individual (“that’s life”
versus “the world is against me”).
• In addition, researchers have found that the other aspects of
life (more pleasant experience called UPLIFTS) can help to
combat the bad feelings that arise from the experience of
hassles. Uplifts are believed to “buffer” (that is, prevent the full
impact of) the stress of hassles on an individual’s physical and
mental condition.
• Uplifts serve to reduce the effects of annoying, frustrating
problems or difficulties and serve as sources of peace,
satisfaction, and even joy (Kanner et al.,1981).

• Examples of uplifts are “saving money,” “finding something

presumed lost,” and “ liking fellow workers.”

• The subject filling out the Uplift Scale indicates for each of the
135 events listed how often (somewhat, moderately, extremely)
each has happened, Evidence suggest that illness can be
brought about by chronic day-to-day hassles that are not
balanced by uplifts. Illness is expected to be more likely to
occur when hassles are frequent and uplifts are relatively few.
• Although they are inherently negative events, hassles may be
relatively rare or idiosyncratic and as such may be
disregarded by an individual. But when hassles appear
continually, particularly if the are not balanced by more
satisfying uplifts, they probably derive from fundamentally
negative life situation filled with chronic stressor.
• Some researchers suggest that chronic stress and deprivation
can make a person somewhat less vulnerable to small daily
hassle because he or she is less affected by small problems in
the face of large ones. (Caspi, Bolger & Eckenrode, 1987)
• Others argue that hassles are inherently bigger problems for
people who are already experiencing chronic stress and
deprivation. (Lazarus,1984b)
• Life change events are defined as those that bring changes in
how the individual lives and require considerable adaptation.
Examples are marriage, divorce, the death of one’s spouse and
moving to a new part of the country. By far the most extensive
research on stress has been conducted using life-change events
as the gauge of an individual’s stress experience.
• The first large-scale attempt to understand stress was
undertaken in the 1960’s (Holmes & Rahe, 1967). Researchers
began with the hypothesis that the degree of stress an
individual experiences can be understood in terms of the
number of life changes he or she has recently undergone.
• The researchers first had hundreds of persons rate the average
degree of readjustment required by each of 43 life-change
events. The values assigned ranged from 100 points for death
of one’s spouse down to 11 points for minor violation of the law.
Included in the list were positive events, such as getting married
and having a vacation, as well as negative events, such as
divorce, trouble with the boss, and serving a jail term.
• Research on life-change events has been criticized as
problematic both conceptually and methodologically. First, the
earliest studies were retrospective nature; that is, subjects were
ask to recollect both life events and the illness episodes they
had experienced in the previous two years. A correlation
between stress and illness could have been the result of
expectations of the respondent, including his or her own belief
that personal stress can lead to illness.
SOURCE: From “The Social Readjustment Rating Scale”
by T.H. Holmes and R. H. Rahe, Journal of Psychosomatic Research, 1967
• Research on the SRRS suggests that the undesirable events
listed in the SRE are better predictor of illness than are the
combined events (both negative and positive) that make up the
entire SRE scale (Ross & Mirowsky, 1979). Furthermore, research
indicates that events that are sudden, negative, unexpected,
and uncontrollable are more likely to predict illness than events
that are positive, expected, under personal control or that
develop gradually with the opportunity for adjustment (Glass,
1977).